THE REAL REASON WE DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS

My late father took to calling me "Little Miss Know-It-All" once I
became a columnist. My mother still teases me about it.

It's a funny thing, being an opinion writer. You have to be out there
with something to say -- otherwise, what's the point? It seems I'm
always weighing in on one thing or another, and never mind that I
might not have known the first thing about the subject prior to that.

I wish I really did know it all. But what journalists are good at is
identifying problems. That doesn't mean we know how to solve them.

Still, you learn a lot after years of writing about problems. The
upside of journalism is getting to see big thinkers working together
with the information, insight and team skills needed to solve a
problem. The downside is realizing how often we get stuck and how the
ruts in the road just keep on getting deeper in the places where we've
spun our wheels a hundred times before.

Every positive change -- gay rights, fewer motor-vehicle deaths, lower
dropout rates, higher birth weights, environmental protection,
equality for women, on and on -- came about because people who knew
their stuff simply got to it and figured things out. We're impressive
problem-solvers when we want to be.

Yet other problems linger on. Why? In my opinion, it usually comes
down to a lack of honesty within the process and conflicting interests.

We talk about our commitment to the issue at hand, but not about the
hidden agendas and politically influenced decision-making that derails
any problem-solving process.

We don't do badly in the first stage of problem-solving, where we're
gathering information. Think of all those fabulous reports that have
come out of the many royal commissions, task forces and inquiries
we've created to help us with stubborn, complex issues.

But so many of those recommendations never make it off the shelf. We
appear genuine in our search for answers, but rarely are.

I was part of a corporate process years ago in which complex problems
were addressed by bringing anyone with a stake in the issue into the
same room to figure things out as a group.

It's amazing how quickly a problem can be resolved when everybody puts
aside their self-interest and works for the greater good.

But there's the sticking point. If anybody is there for the wrong
reason or is less than honest about adopting the solutions that emerge
from the process, it all goes wrong pretty quickly.

You need to be willing to compromise your own interests to solve a
problem and be honest in talking about the challenges. Change can't
happen otherwise.

An example: We can't possibly solve the problem of people with mental
illness falling into homelessness until those with the power and the
funding are honest about the level of service needed and the fact that
we're not even close to providing it.

We can't wish everybody off our streets while at the same time slowing
the building of subsidized housing across Canada to a trickle and
gentrifying every neighbourhood to suit the middle class.

We can't address the crisis in our health, social and justice systems
caused by drug addiction without acknowledging that we've cut services
so aggressively in the last decade that treatment these days is
readily available only if you can afford private care at $10,000-plus
a month.

We can't address the needs of the 35,000 British Columbians who live
with mental handicaps while cutting and capping vital supports that
were never generous in the first place. We can't feel good about
expanding disability services to include people with Fetal Alcohol
Spectrum Disorder while cutting overall funding so that everybody will
receive less help.

We can't help people with brain injuries by scrapping a community
program that used to help them make the transition from hospital to
home, as we did two years ago. That not only exacerbated problems for
that group, it complicated solutions around homelessness: Brain injury
is a fact of life for more than half of the people living on our
streets and the reason why many are homeless in the first place.

We'll solve our tough problems when we're honest about them and
cognizant of the political spin and self-interest that undermines the
process.

I'd like to say the day is soon coming. But Little Miss Know-It-All
isn't at all sure about that.